Bad Oeynhausen on Friday was by FAR the coolest thing we've done so far. I loved going to the vet school the second week, but the Heart and Diabetes center totally trumped it because now I can say I've seen open-heart surgery. SOOO awesome! Dr. Mirow, the surgeon in our room, was really great about explaining everything that he was doing to our patient who he lovingly referred to as the "Walrus". I guess I never really thought about replacing a coronary vessel with a saphenous vein, so I was really intrigued by the whole procedure. It was interesting to see the differences between human and animal surgery, like how they sterilize the ENTIRE body for human surgery and have a table the size of Rhode Island full of instruments. Susan and I got to stand basically right above the patient's open chest and had a view almost as good as the surgeon's...I can't imagine that visitors would get to be that close in the states. The hardest part of the surgery for me to watch was when they were using a metal crank to spread his ribs. It kind of made my chest cavity sore.
After lunch we toured their ICU and MRI facilities, which I also really enjoyed. I liked being able to see and talk to the patients who had received or were awaiting transplants. I totally didn't expect heart transplant patients to bounce back as quickly as the one patient we saw. I wonder what its like for other types of organ recipients. All of our guides that day were awesome--they explained everything in detail, showed us everything they could, and spoke amazing English to boot! Playing with the MRI machine was fun. Whenever we walked close to the magnetic field it pulled any form of cheap jewelry toward it--Christine and my ears pulled forward because of our earrings. It was probably the weirdest my ears have ever felt.
This part of the program was the best so far, and I totally think it should happen every single time students come!
No comments:
Post a Comment